If he were thus to his acquaintance, to the friends whom he loved, he was far more. From the divine love which he cherished, as the source of every virtue, sprung a spirit of attachment pure, tender, and generous. His own sentiments with regard to friendship, when he expatiates on it, in a letter to the duke of Burgundy, are conceived in the noblest and most disinterested sense. In practice, he was forbearing and delicate; he bore the faults of those around him, yet seized the happy moment to instruct and amend. He felt that self-love rendered us alive to the imperfections of another; and that want of sympathy arose from being too self-engrossed. He knew it was the duty of a friend to correct faults; but he could wait patiently for years to give one salutary lesson. In the same spirit, he begged his friends not to be sparing in their instructions to him. His great principle was, that all was in common with friends. "How delightful it would be," he sometimes said, "if every possession was a common one; if each man would no longer regard his knowledge, his virtues, his enjoyments, and his wealth, as his own merely. It is thus, that in heaven, that the saints have all things in God, and nothing in themselves. It is a general and infinite beatitude, whose flux and reflux causes their fulness of bliss. If our friends below would submit to the same poverty, and the same community of all things, temporal and spiritual, we should no longer hear those chilling words _thine_ and mine; we should all be rich and poor in unity." The death of one he loved could move him to profound grief; and he could say--"Our true friends are at once our greatest delight and greatest sorrow. One is tempted to wish that all attached friends should agree to die together on the same day: those who love not, are willing to bury all their fellow-creatures, with dry eyes and satisfied hearts; they are not worthy to live. It costs much to be susceptible to friendship; but those who are, would be ashamed if they were not; they prefer suffering to heartlessness." Religion alone could bring consolation:--"Let us unite ourselves in heart," he wrote, "to those whom we regret; he is not far from us, though invisible; he tells us, in mute speech, to hasten to rejoin him. Pure spirits see, hear, and love their friends in the common centre." Such are the soothing expressions of Fénélon; and such as these caused d'Alembert to remark, "that the touching charm of his works, is the sense of quiescence and peace which he imparts to his reader; it is a friend who draws near, and whose soul overflows into yours: he suspends, at least for a time, your regrets and sufferings. We may pardon many men who force us to hate humanity, in favour of Fénélon who makes us love it."